


when the night was full of terror (and your eyes, full of tears)

by mars22



Series: dear true love (a farewell that came all too soon) [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ficlet, Jilytober 2020, Multi, aha sad, honestly what is my issue, i wrote this in forty (40) minutes, jilytober, so if it's bad just ignore it :), top ten worst descriptions btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:05:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27130144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mars22/pseuds/mars22
Summary: lily evans' last moments on earth.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Lily Evans Potter, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Series: dear true love (a farewell that came all too soon) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980235
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	when the night was full of terror (and your eyes, full of tears)

It happened very quickly. 

  
She was halfway down the hall, holding her baby in her arms and talking absent mindedly to him as if he could understand, trying to pry his tiny fingers away from pulling on her red hair, when she heard James' voice. It wasn't soft or loving or playful, the way it usually was when he spoke to her, but urgent and anxious. It was the way he sounded when she told him about running into budding Death Eaters in the halls at school and the vile language they directed at her, or when she would be just a little too careless on Order missions and get herself hurt. 

  
"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

  
His words sent chills down her spine and made her blood run cold. If she were younger and a little more reckless, if she didn't have a baby with wide eyes in reaction to his father's shouts in her arms, she would've ran towards James instead of following his instruction. She would've whipped out her wand ( _where was her wand?_ ) and fought with him before anything else. But, she considers his words for a fraction of a second, and green eyes meet green eyes, and she runs towards Harry's room at the end of the hall. 

  
The door closes a heartbeat before there's a dull thud from the threshold below, and she knows. Distantly, while she examines the room and tries to figure out what she's going to do without her bloody wand, she thinks of James. She thinks of his crooked smile and glasses, his messy hair and warm hugs. She thinks of him winning the Quidditch cup in seventh year and subsequently kissing her like that's all he was born to do, she thinks of his glassy eyes when he saw Harry for the first time, and tries not to imagine them foggy and sunken and unseeing. 

  
She fails. She vaguely hears herself screaming. 

  
Lily hears footfalls approaching and begins dragging pieces of furniture at random across the floor towards the door, just to pretend as if that will help. Harry is still in her arms, and starting to fuss. 

  
"It's okay, baby," she whispers, listening as _he_ approaches and desperately dragging a shelf across the room with one arm. "You're okay. I love you, Harry, okay? Everything's okay." 

  
In front of her, the door throws itself open, the furniture she dragged sliding lazily away to let Voldemort in. For a moment, a fraction of a second, she is frozen, as she eyes the man that has caused her so much pain, who ordered his servants to kill her very best friend, who has just killed James not a minute earlier. She looks at him with pure, unfiltered hatred, for as long as she can before turning and practically throwing Harry into his crib and standing in between them like a shield. 

  
_He's a baby,_ she thinks. _He is a baby, and you've just killed his dad, and I hate you._

  
"Not Harry," Lily tries to sound defiant and confidant and proud but her eyes are filling with tears as she thinks of Marlene and James hoisting the Cup together and of their cold bodies and of the fussing son behind her, and her voice is starting to break. "Please, not Harry!"

  
"Stand aside," he says, and she almost laughs. The thought of letting Voldemort kill her son, her baby, James' baby, is unthinkable to her. She doesn't move.

"Not Harry, please, kill me instead," she's begging now, full on, and doesn't have room in her head to be ashamed of begging for her life, of dying that weak, and she could almost hear Sirius in her head, _Going chicken, Evans?_

  
"This is my last warning."

  
Lily tries to straighten herself, and cover Harry, and she desperately and selfishly wants to turn, to get one last glance at her son, at the tiny laughing boy that had been made and raised with love, but her bright, defiant eyes never leave Voldemort's cold, harsh ones.

  
She sees him raise his wand, and she thinks of hazel, of eyes like honey and the way they reflected in the evening sun and on the Quidditch pitch and when he looked at her with so much love she felt like she could burst with the shared feeling. She thinks of the tiny, gurgling boy behind her and doesn't move. 

  
Everything is green, for a second, and then there isn't anything, anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> title is a lyric from "the night we met" by lord huron  
> okay!! i wrote the james thing awhile ago and today while i was doing the dishes i thought "why not the same thing,, but lily edition". so i spent the past forty minutes writing this n i hope you like it. i can't dialogue and we know this!!! i also don't know how to come up with a title nor a description but We Are Going To Ignore It, okay?? deal.  
> you can find me on tumblr under mikewhecler :)


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